posted at 10:01 am on October 3, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

History arrives the first time as tragedy, we are told, and the second time as farce. The 17th government shutdown is long on the latter and short on the former, at least at the moment, but that’s not specifically what this story illustrates. After the Obama administration rushed barricades (some call them Barry-cades now) to block access to popular Washington memorials that don’t have any restricted access at all under normal conditions, the plight of World War II veterans became a national story — and an opportunity for Republicans to intervene easily on their behalf. By the time Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) arrived to lend a hand, plenty more opposition to the GOP had a chance to organize. After Neugebauer scolded a Parks Service ranger, a furloughed worker lashed out at the Congressman — and someone lashed out at him afterward:

(Update: Replaced embed code, but if it still doesn’t work, follow the links to see vid.)

Now there’s video from Wednesday of Texas Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer telling a Park Service ranger that she and her bosses should be ashamed for carrying out the order that the memorial, like other national parks and monuments, should be closed because there’s no money available to keep them open.

Neugebauer was there as more WWII veterans were allowed to visit the memorial because the Park Service has decided the vets are exercising their First Amendment rights. But he wasn’t pleased that other members of the public weren’t being allowed on to the memorial site. He told the ranger that the Park Service should be ashamed. She said it’s difficult to turn people away, but that she wasn’t ashamed. “You should be,” Neugebauer responded.

It’s then that a man in a bicycle helmet told the congressman that “this woman [the ranger] is doing her job, just like me. I’m a 30-year federal veteran — I’m out of work.”

Neugebauer responded that it’s Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has “decided to shut down the government.”

“No, it’s because the government won’t do its job and pass a budget,” the cyclist countered.

In the background, another voice can be heard taking Neugebauer’s side: “The House did their job, they passed appropriations. The Senate hasn’t.”

Neuegebauer probably won’t put this clip into his career scrapbook. The ranger on duty had been instructed to patrol the barricade, and Neugebauer’s harangue wasn’t going to change that. She’s not the one who ordered the costly and unnecessary obstruction of the memorial, and for that matter, it wasn’t the National Parks Service’s idea either. That order came from the Office of Management and Budget, at the White House. Republicans should make sure they’re aiming a little higher than a park ranger when it comes to scolding and shaming. To his credit, Neugebauer realized his mistake and admitted it later.

The rest of the clip is interesting for its silliness. The furloughed worker made sure to yell at Neugebauer because Congress hasn’t passed a budget, which is true, but the House has passed a number of CRs that would have kept the government in operation — with increasingly smaller demands. It’s the Senate that refuses to negotiate at all, claiming bizarrely that the House has no say in what gets funded.

Finally, we proceed from tragedy to farce to the theater of the absurd in the final moments of the clip. Protesters gathered at the WWII memorial in the middle of a budget crisis to demand …. higher wages. Meanwhile, the WWII veterans who wanted a nice day in the park with their fellow members of the Greatest Generation must have been reminiscing about the good old days of corporal punishment. It’s the First Amendment exercise that the National Parks Service graciously decided to allow, even while being completely incapable of explaining exactly why a park that’s open 24/7 under normal circumstances for free needed such an exception this week for access.

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Then you obviously are not a student of WWII history, and the mindless devotion to “just following orders” and lack of shame of the lower ranks for what they were following.

Obviously a park/memorial doesn’t equal families being slaughtered, but it all has to begin somewhere–often quite benignly. I won’t say “slippery slope” because that will verbadouche off and turn this into a “gay” thread.

Nutstuyu on October 3, 2013 at 11:16 AM

You obviously do not know a single thing about me, but you are making judgments about what I know and don’t know about WWII? Seriously, your qualifications to judge unknown people on an internet chat site come from where again?

Look up Godwins law and come back and we will talk about people’s over reactions on here about a GS employee telling people the park is closed.

And you base the opinion on what Bishop? We used it and benefited greatly from the savings in our salad days. Just because it goes against the narrative you want to believe doesn’t make your opinion true. If you haven’t lived the life of a junior enlisted person with a family you won’t understand.

Bradky on October 3, 2013 at 11:20 AM

On being former Navy and living the life of a junior enlisted man outside the base gates of NAS Alameda with my wife.

Man, your righteous argument just fell apart, didn’t it? And here you thought no one but you has ever had any life experience to draw upon.

verbaluce, you should have a higher opinion of me than that I would think. I have elected to be absorbed into your side of the isle. I am learning conformity. It won’t be with out a glitch to be sure. Here a nice little tune for you so that you may understand the new me.

That wasn’t an answer. What happens if I need the care NOW, not after two weeks of begging from my neighbors, I mean right NOW, and I can’t afford the deductible?

Bishop on October 3, 2013 at 11:27 AM

What happens if your eyeball is in the talons of an eagle NOW…what do you do, RIGHT NOW?
I just don’t know, dude. These are some crazy questions.

I know you’re one of those ‘answer my question!’ posters – but your questions aren’t, really. Why don’t you just make the point you want to?
I assume you feel you’d be in a better spot without insurance or something?
But…just say whatever it is you want to say, for goodness sake.

The photo shows a National Park employee out this morning putting up a Barrycade on the GW Parkway so that no one can pull over and stop for a minute.

This is a scenic overlook on the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Washington, D.C. The GW is one of the most scenic routes around the nation’s capital. Scenic overlooks are unmanned places where motorists can pull in, park for a couple minutes, look around, maybe snap a photo, and then move on with their day. There are no amenities. It’s just a small parking lot.

The truck belongs to the National Park Service. Note the logo on its door. It’s this logo.

It doesn’t cost a cent to leave the scenic overlooks unmanned. But it does cost money — pay, fuel, the cost of the obstacles — to send National Park Service personnel out with Barrycades to block them off.

For most cases they give the care and bill you for the deductible later. The only case they do not do this is for non emergency care that they know the cost of up front, such as going in for a check up or having your daughter’s wound looked at to see if it needs doctor care or is doing fine with at home care.
In fact, I have never once been asked for up front payment for anything, and I paid cash for medical care for 20 years, for anything except routine care where the bill = office visit price.

The park ranger can be forgiven for carrying out her orders.. but neither she nor everyone above her can be forgiven for the sheer stupidity of applying the First Amendment to the veterans, but not to everyone else.

The 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I’m simply interested in knowing whether or not you (and every other liberal who has avoided the question as you have) understand what will happen if a person can’t pay their deductible under a scheme known as the Affordable Care Act.

You are of course correct. Verbalicious and her fellow travelers who are swooning in ecstasy about this scheme are going to wish they had put more pressure on their democrat reps to actually read the bill before passing it into law.

Their ignorance of what is coming is astounding. Then again they’re liberals, high-minded social experimentation today without comprehending the end result tomorrow comes with the territory.

Their ignorance of what is coming is astounding. Then again they’re liberals, high-minded social experimentation today without comprehending the end result tomorrow comes with the territory.

Bishop on October 3, 2013 at 11:53 AM

It will be back later after doing productive “stuff” in an incredibly productive business. And you or resist will ask the same question(s) over again. And it will act like it hasn’t understood that it has ever been asked that question, and will deflect again, and run away again.

She’s looking right now at a breakdown of the ACA and muttering “Oh shiite, they were right.”

Soon after, verbies will toss her Ipad from the top of her rent-controlled building and pretend that she never read anything, and since she never read it the facts contained within don’t actually exist.

She’s looking right now at a breakdown of the ACA and muttering “Oh shiite, they were right.”

Soon after, verbies will toss her Ipad from the top of her rent-controlled building and pretend that she never read anything, and since she never read it the facts contained within don’t actually exist.

Bishop on October 3, 2013 at 12:07 PM

Nothing that another grand edict couldn’t take care of. Same with the fines being post tax return.

No difference whatsoever in tactics – no difference whatsoever in the miserable human beings spewing the words.

Bradky on October 3, 2013 at 10:44 AM

When you say stupid sh1t like this I wonder who’s as@ you’re trying to kiss. You’re too smart to rationally draw a moral equivalence between scum like Harry Reid and the bright and decent Ted Cruz; so what is causing your irrationality?

When you say stupid sh1t like this I wonder who’s as@ you’re trying to kiss. You’re too smart to rationally draw a moral equivalence between scum like Harry Reid and the bright and decent Ted Cruz; so what is causing your irrationality?

That is even sadder knowing that you have forgotten the difficulty of getting by on the junior enlisted pay.
Self righteous is the attitude of take mine not theirs and I’ve got mine screw them.

Bradky on October 3, 2013 at 11:29 AM

I got by just fine because I budgeted.

Like I said, the price difference between commissary and private food stores isn’t going to break anyone over a two week period, if you think it will then maybe you’ve forgotten a thing or two yourself.

This park ranger may only be doing her job but she is a functionary of the government. Without her following orders, the Obama Regime would collapse. I am not equating the two but had the guards at Auschwitz not done their jobs, history might have been changed. In Vietnam, I watched the National Liberation Front win in part by attacking soft targets in the form of government functionaries, the teachers, the postal workers. I’m not advocating attacks on government workers but they are part of the problem. They complain about being laid off but what they don’t tell you is that the money will be made up to them at a latter date. That does not happen in the private sector. Public sector workers like to say they are “taxpayers” too but they pay their “taxes” with our dollars. Wealth (dollars) are only created within the private sector. Other than the military and some other departments, a large percentage of the federal employment is “work welfare”. If the Obama Regime took it’s foot off the neck of business, private sector jobs would be created for these “government workers”. But the truth is they don’t want private sector jobs which come with accountability and consequences for poor performance.

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary; too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” Thomas Jefferson, 1824

Of course. Man who’s getting his $174,000 salary with healthcare yells at woman who’s not getting paid for something he’s responsible for. What a bully.

lostmotherland on October 3, 2013 at 6:01 PM

If she’s out there in uniform keeping people out, then she IS in fact getting paid.
When government personnel are furloughed, they are not allowed to show up for work, or do any part of their normal job, even from home.
Get a clue.

PHOTO: National Park Service Barrycades Scenic Overlooks on the GW Parkway

The photo shows a National Park employee out this morning putting up a Barrycade on the GW Parkway so that no one can pull over and stop for a minute.

This is a scenic overlook on the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Washington, D.C. The GW is one of the most scenic routes around the nation’s capital. Scenic overlooks are unmanned places where motorists can pull in, park for a couple minutes, look around, maybe snap a photo, and then move on with their day. There are no amenities. It’s just a small parking lot.

The truck belongs to the National Park Service. Note the logo on its door. It’s this logo.

It doesn’t cost a cent to leave the scenic overlooks unmanned. But it does cost money — pay, fuel, the cost of the obstacles — to send National Park Service personnel out with Barrycades to block them off

.

INC on October 3, 2013 at 11:35 AM

I’m sorry, but due to the government shutdown all public scenery is closed until further notice.

These barricades are to remind you to do your patriotic duty and not allow yourself to enjoy any pretty landscapes until the funding for them can be restored.